1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a robot system including an automatically operating and running small-sized robot which can spray a necessary minimum amount of chemical or insecticide onto a location at which termites are living only at wood sections under the floor of an architectural structure such as a house, particularly at structural members such as groudsills, sleepers, corner sections of walls, upon accurate confirmation by a monitor.
2. Description of Prior Art
Hitherto spraying chemical or insecticide for termites onto wood structural members has been mainly carried out manually by a person who gets under the floor. However, in this manner of spraying chemical, the person gets into a place under the floor which place is considerably small in height and sprays chemical. Such an operation is painful, dirty, dangerous owing to a long time suction of chemical. Accordingly, recently it is difficult to obtain such operators and therefore the business of such operations are difficult to continue. Additionally, such an operation is usually made by two persons and therefore relatively high personnel expenses are necessary thereby unavoidably raising cost for exterminating termites. However, consumers cannot pay a high cost frequently, and consequently the consumers expect a long term (about five years) continuing effect for exterminating termites upon one chemical spraying operation. In order to ensure such a long term continuing effect, a large amount of chemical or insecticide is required to be sprayed in the place under the floor. As a result, there are fears of residents of the house and neighbors being subjected to sanitary problems and of pollution of circumstances.
Recently, a device for spraying chemical or insecticide has been proposed as shown in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 63-317034. This device includes an electric circuit having a ON-OFF switch and arranged to run but be difficult to turn around, and therefore the following difficulties have been encountered in the device, so that the device has not brought into practical use:
a) The device is of a simple ON-OFF switch operation type, and therefore an operator outside an architectural structure or house cannot accurately grasp a condition under the floor, so that the device merely sprays chemical or insecticide into the place under the floor. This requires a large amount of chemical and therefore provides not only an insanitary condition to residents but also environmental pollution to neighbors. PA1 b) This device is not provided with an effective detecting mechanism for objective insects such as termites and an effective memory device. Accordingly, this device cannot grasp the condition under the floor at all before, during and after a chemical spraying operation, and therefore it cannot recognize a chemical spraying necessary part. PA1 c) Although a signal representative of a trouble of the device can be received, the operation state of the device cannot be monitored and no remote control for the device cannot be made. PA1 d) The device is arranged to spray chemical or insecticide to the ground under the floor and a concrete wall section as passages for termites. However, the device cannot spray selectively onto wood sections such as groundsills, sleepers at which termites make their harm, thereby providing an uneconomical problem. PA1 e) The device cannot spray chemical or insecticide into corner sections under the floor to which termites tend to easily enter. This makes impossible a substantial extermination of termites. PA1 f) The device uses flat caterpillars and therefore is difficult to turn around thereby making impossible an accurate selection for a chemical spraying place. PA1 1) The robot or moving truck is driven through a pair of horizontally turning type caterpillars and the DC geared motors, and arranged to change the distance between the robot main body and the endless track mechanism or locomotive section upon being watched by the mechanical sensor. The robot includes the main body lift mechanism for changing the height of the main body relative to the ground, and the mechanism for detecting the travel distance and the rotational angle of the robot under the action of the encoder operatively connected to the rollers inside the endless track mechanism or caterpillarss. PA1 2) The onboard computer in the robot main body is electrically connected with the host computer through radio modem. An automatic control mechanism is provided to accomplish an automatic control for the robot under watching of the computers. The onboard computer collects a variety of data from sensors of at various sections of the robot and receives command data from the host computer, on which a judgment is made as to whether the command from the host computer can be executed or not while repeating transmission of the command to each device and storing the locational and shape informations to a memory. The host computer receives data from the onboard computer and displays them on the display thereof and stores them in a floppy disc, while repeating the output and input of the data between it and the onboard computer. Displayed on the display of the host computer are electric source voltage, information from each sensor, the present location of the robot, the direction of the robot. In case that the reception condition is not good and there is no room in the memory, a program for a self-returning subroutine is executed. PA1 3) It may be accomplished that the location of an object or a wood section can be confirmed by the small-sized CCD camera and a photo sensor for detecting the luminous paint attached on the wood section. The image of the object is monitored and displayed. Additionally, in order to compensate the dead area for the CCD camera or the sensor, the infrared sensors are installed at the various sections of the robot to search as to whether the robot approaches an obstacle or not. Furthermore, the robot functions to search and measure the distance between the robot main body and the object by means of the infrared sensor. PA1 4) After the robot has sprayed the chemical on the object, the host computer confirms and memorizes the shape and location of the object by the data received from the onboard computer. At chemical sprayings at the next time or thereafter, the memorized informations at the preceding time is used thereby accomplishing automatic spraying operation of the chemical without new search of the shape and location of the object. Thus, the robot system is provided with a reproduction mechanism for the chemical spraying operation. PA1 5) The robot may is provided with one of a surface temperature sensor for detecting a temperature of a surface of the wood structural members, an acoustic sensor for detecting sound generated by termite, and a pheromone sensor for detecting smell of pheromone, thereby searching the location at which termites are living.
Thus, the above-discussed conventional device for spraying chemical has many disadvantages and problems, and therefore it is now within a region of desk plan and difficult to be brought into practical use. Additionally, the device is low in possibility of practical use.